


The burning bright feelings of Anthony J. Crowley

by capitainenour



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alcohol, Grief/Mourning, Hope vs. Despair, Humanity, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love, M/M, The Ineffable Plan (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 04:56:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19266313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capitainenour/pseuds/capitainenour
Summary: Few hours before the Apocalypse, Aziraphale vanishes and his bookshop gets ravaged by ferocious flames.In front of that devastation, Crowley's emotions and feelings start to blow up, and he starts wondering about his condition.





	The burning bright feelings of Anthony J. Crowley

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my little pinch of salt thrown gracefully (or not) on this website.  
> Been a while since I ever posted something, and I enjoyed writing this fanfic, it made me feel better.  
> Hope you'll enjoy reading this, xoxo

I got out of my car, only to see his bookshop consumed by voracious flames and vanishing into stifling mist.  
If I ever had a heart, I think it would’ve crashed in the hot ground.  
Instead of it, I just felt my damned soul violently rifting.  
I pushed the door, and everything was on fire. The old books, those odd spell and prophecy books that Aziraphale spent centuries to collect, the wooden luxurious furniture, and the smell of all of his silky suits were scratching my nose.  
Only one name managed to get out of my throat: Aziraphale.  
Some delicate pearls of sweat started streaming down my forehead.  
Then, I think I started yelling loudly howling beast screaming.  
«Bastards, you killed my best friend»  
I was turning, running, searching for him, for his shadow, for a wraith of him, but in vain.  
He disappeared. Totally. He was gone.  
Seeing there was no point in flaying my voice anymore, the silence came back again hitting me with an unbearable despair like a red hot poker piercing my flesh.  
It couldn’t be the end of it all. I can’t and I won’t believe it.  
All of those six thousand years we spent together on this little endearing rock, the place chosen by ourselves, our heaven and our hell, this can’t be the ending, few hours before Armaggedon.  
I was going to be with him forever, humans and us, us and humans.  
Funny how our paths always managed to cross each other, since the beginning of times.  
Funny how we never got closer than this, assembling to save the world, although we knew it was absurd.  
Fighting the Great Plan, it was like fighting against windmills.  
But never have I seen more splendid windmills, mirages enlightened by his angelic aura.  
I was about to leave when I stumbled upon a green book, the only book that didn’t burn, with on its cover was written in golden letters «The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch»  
It was the only thing that I had left from those devastating, furious and cruel flames. I picked it up and I got out of his bookshop.  
I removed my broken sunglasses. I should probably litter, but who cares, am I not a demon after all?  
My ears were buzzing like an old fridge, and my head was hurting me so bad, you can’t even imagine how painful it was.  
I even struggle to process any thought.  
How cunning must I sound now. How foolish I was, just saying I didn’t need him.  
Why wouldn’t I need him? Did he believe it? I hope he didn’t.  
I said I was leaving to Alpha Centauri. Yes that was my plan, obviously.  
But I never would’ve done it without him.  
I am not used to be lonely anymore, and Alpha Centauri and all those other tiny little stars would have lost all of their ravishing beauty if I were all by myself.  
Stars would pass away and blow out slowly, and I’d be alone, in the dim, watching as the universe collapses.  
Then I’d let myself slip in death’s cold arms.  
Alcohol.  
Hope he wasn’t angry after me. I shouldn’t have said those words. He said he forgave me. But did he?  
I should stop persecuting myself with all these stupid interrogations.  
Even the most atrocious tortures I’ve endured are nothing in front of the ache of his loss.  
How do humans deal with loss and grief? They are used with fatality, but it’s not normal for me.  
Is that being a demon, just damned to lose everything you cherish?  
Was that the real calamity hex put on my shoulders, only because I was asking the wrong questions? Or where they right?  
Was I right, in everything I done? Because if not, then I’m lost.  
If he wasn’t here, then what would have I become?  
Just a bitter hellion filled with emptiness, and hatred would have gnawed what was left of me.  
I knew at the moment I gazed into his eyes six thousand years ago that our paths were inescapably chained.  
Angel gave me something I never had before, not even before my fall: hope.  
Hope is so human, so fragile, so destined to fade out, but yet so marvelous.  
It made me in some point, human. What a wonderful thing to be, human.  
I never asked to be an angel, never asked to be fallen, nor to be a demon.  
As I lived among humans, I started culling, deciding, and eventually attributed myself a name, Crowley.  
World is collapsing and my hope is crushed and smashed on the burning concrete.  
May the universe debacle with its dazzling snares.  
I wouldn’t give a single fucking damn.  
«Oh no my dear, you should not say such harsh things»  
Then tell me, Aziraphale, what should I think?  
_I don’t need another man to tell me what do, but should I feel so ashamed that all I want is you?_  
I’m begging the stars for you to come back. I would give up everything, abnegate who I am, drown myself in holy water, I would even get down the moon just for you to come back.  
Why leaving now, don’t you know how much I wished disappearing by your side, holding you tight for the last time?  
May the war between heaven and hell be a bloodbath, the only satisfaction I will ever have, from now. May they all perish by the sword of their ancestral enmity and shall they suffocate by the blaze of my everlasting despair.  
Still, this doesn’t feel right. And what a liar I am: of course I would give a damn.  
What do I know about right and wrong? Am I not the «foul fiend» after all?  
Guide me, Angel. Should I keep on combating for the sake of humanity or should I let it all burst? I was the one who wanted us to fight, to not give up, but it’s all blurred down now. My verve is gone.  
It made sense to me back then, why would it stop now?  
Letting myself stifle in the vapors of luxurious spirits is all I’m able to do at the moment.  
If I only had the time to tell what I feel like, the intensity of the passion devoted to him.  
But some words should be kept silent, left untold.  
The four letter word is too precious to be pronounced. And he did know it, didn’t he?  
I never was able to be on any side because of its impact. I embraced its true meaning quite early. And I fully embodied it, in every second of my earthly existence.  
But wait… why should it be? Why should it be left unsaid?  
Before meeting him I never imagined my species, you know, ethereal and hellish creatures could ever be able to feel anything. It did not even exist.  
No, we actually did feel something: the fear of God.  
The convenient thing about the Fear of God is that it kept everyone quiet and obedient. And those who tell you that demons are not fearful are perjurers: of course they do, then why would they accept its Great Plan anyway?  
Their fall was caused because of them asking questions, but interrogating the Plan’s quintessence doesn’t mean automatically going against it.  
I think I am sometimes fearful too, frightened and so scared, but this deep rooted fear seem to slowly disappear and vanish in me, now.  
Humans are so astounding because although they know their end is nigh, fear does not stop them, they live because they know that the moment’s coming. It gives them… hope.  
Building Babel Towers to reach the skies.  
Now that I know that my demise is coming and has already began when my angel evaporated.  
If I ever have the chance to see Aziraphale again, even in a daydream I will tell him.  
May wherever he is be happy and peaceful.  
There’s no getting back, no resurrection for burned angels, no resurrection for demons who were touched by holy water.  
The second real curse about us angels and demons is that lost ones don’t have funerals, nor burials. We don’t have any material to remember or to symbolize someone, but I have this seaweed green book I picked up back in the bookshop.  
I will drive as fast as I can, as fast as my Bentley could handle, find a quiet beautiful place somewhere in a cliff, by the sea, bury the book, and probably plant a lavender flower.  
Maybe it will become a lavender garden, with time.  
It won’t. Flowers can’t grow close to sea spray.  
I love feeling pearls of delicate salted water on my cheeks.  
Oh and I should buy some candies. He loved eating, he loved candies, specially Thornton toffees. And hot cocoa. I should maybe spill some on his grave.  
I might as well save the world.  
I pour myself another glass.  
That’s pretentious, as if earth was waiting for me.  
How can I save the world? I’ve lost the Antichrist, and I’m alone against millions.  
Murdering that kid wouldn’t be the answer, war would still happen no matter what. I can’t even establish a plan, I don’t even know where it’s all happening, a needle in the hay.  
How frustrating, Mr Know-it-all.  
Hastur’s locked in tape and can’t witness about anything, I can still try to communicate with Hell, Beelzebub and pretend anything that might sound plausible.  
They must know now the Antichrist’s location, war starting in only a few hours ahead.  
And then everyone will be safe and sound. Wouldn’t it be wonderful?  
What is this yearning, hitting me again?  
Nothing can grow in a cliff, and sea salt will corrode the brittle petals.  
I want to run away but my ass is glued to this chair, in a gloomy bar somewhere lost, totally shitfaced.  
I hate Shakespeare’s gloomy ones.  
_“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions”_  
Here are the battalions stabbing my head with incessant sorrow and despair.  
I want to weep, for the first time in my whole existence.  
Not sure I can properly cry, never had tears in my eyes before.  
_They all say to feel this way is weak and out of style. Well I think they are pretty lame._  
I never asked to be a demon.  
I was just minding my own business one day and then...oh, lookie here, it’s Lucifer and the guys.  
Oh, hey, the food hadn’t been that good lately.  
I didn’t have anything on for the rest of that afternoon.  
Next thing I’m doing a million-light-year freestyle dive into a pool of boiling sulphur.  
...  
  
Aziraphale?  
  
Are you in here?

**Author's Note:**

> "I don’t need another man to tell me what do, but should I feel so ashamed that all I want is you?" and "They all say to feel this way is weak and out of style. Well I think they are pretty lame." are lyrics from Princess Chelsea's "I miss my Man" and I felt like it suited the mood, as something very eerie yet melancholic (link in the end if interested) 
> 
> The third quote “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions” is a quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act IV Scene 5) which I think was pretty interesting to use, specially for the shadowing and that little wink to the story and Hamlet's adaptation in which David Tennant played, which is my favourite adaptation of this iconic play. 
> 
> I Miss My Man by Princess Chelsea: https://vimeo.com/285617152
> 
> (also the last segment is obiously a part of Good Omens script and dialogue of the scene that followed, of course I don't own that part/ those sentences, from "I never asked to be a demon" until the end)


End file.
